Thursday, September 3, 2009

Small Bob and I had plans to meet Mary and her son Ivan at the Natural History Museum. We left a little early but still hit some traffic in downtown. After we finally made it off of the 110 onto the 10, the traffic lightened up but we were still running a few minutes late. We exited at La Brea and then cruised up to Wilshire, pulled into the parking lot, paid our $9.00 and then climbed the mile or so of steps to get over the hill and then down another flight to arrive at the entrance. As I looked up at the museum’s impressive façade, I realized that we were standing in front of the George C. Page Museum at the LaBrea Tar Pits in Mid-Wilshire, not the Natural History Museum which is near downtown, 9 miles and 25 minutes away.

I have never been a fan of the term “brain fart,” in fact it has long been a peeve of mine, along with the phrase “It’s all good,” the Rachel Ray-ism “EVOO” and the word “peeve.” But a "brain fart" is what it was, stinky and annoying. The worst was breaking the news to three-year-old Bob. Whenever he gets an inkling that I have made a wrong turn, the backseat driving begins. A mistake of this magnitude would be epic.

“Bob, we have to go back to the car. We are at the wrong museum.”

“We are at the wrong museum? What did you do?”

“Just get in the car. Let’s hurry. Mary and Ivan are waiting for us at the other museum.”

“You are turning around? We are lost?”

“We aren’t lost, I just went to the wrong place.”

“I don’t know how to go there! What is the name of this street? You are making a left? No! No! Go the other way!”

“Bob, you don’t know where we’re going, you’ve never been there before. This is La Brea.”

“We are lost! You have to call Daddy! Where we are going next?”

“We are getting back on the freeway and going towards downtown.”

“No! Go west! Go west!”

“Bob, I will remind you that you don’t even know what that means and also we need to go east.”

I laughed so hard when I read this. It does sound like the GPS used when we were in WI Dells last week. She got distracted when a grasshopper flew in the window and drove 20 miles the wrong way. It kept saying "Turn around now! Turn around!"